Mind Blogging. Mind Boggling.

Note: There are no spoilers in this write up. 

The book talks about how to live life at a time when some of the biggest and most famous companies around are tech cos which are working skilfuly to harness a scarce resource- your attention! Written by an artist (Jenny Odell) who is contemporary and currently active working in an interesting field, the book provides thought provoking perspectives which captivated me. Coming from an author from a background very different from the authors I usually read, it taps into a world of references (art work, books and philosophers ) which are completely new to me and really opened my mind. The most striking example for me being the work of the artist David Hockney, who Wikipedia described as 'One of the most influential British artists of the 20th century'. His works in the field of 'the power of attention' are fascinating and are described in detail in the book. The book spans across technology, philosophy, history and art, and thus provides an enjoyable and challenging mental ride.  

I have come across Hockney's famous painting, 'A bigger splash', actually repainted by my friend V who in fact relocated to London where he might have discovered this famous English artist. However, his oeuvre (Hockney, not V) from another set of work - photographs - is referenced in the book. And on that note, scattered throughout the book are themes and ideas which I have encountered or engaged with before at varying levels of time or depth, but not fully grasped. That enabled me to resonate quite deeply with many aspects of the book, and it thus felt like a key milestone in my 'quests' of life. Examples of such themes include: Bird watching, the great outdoors (nature and trees), Cubism, puzzling modern art paintings such as a plain monocolor, the contrast between zooming out of a scene to get an 'outsider's perspective' while staying in the scene at the same time, the rebellions of the philosopher Diogenes of Greece, performance art. These themes are not central to the book and in no particular order, so no spoilers there, really. Bird watching is a somewhat constant analogy which does come in and out of the pages, but it's introduced in very first pages. One such resonation which startled me was when she refers to the fictional work of 'Walden Two'  and the 'Library of Walden'- it ties back to my multiple visits as a child to a fabulous (and now shut) bookstore called Walden, in Hyderabad, during my idyllic summer holidays.  

However, to reiterate- apart from some scattered aspects which I had thought about earlier, there is a wealth of references and viewpoints that are completely new to me.

The book makes lots of nuanced, striking and beautiful philosophical points, referring to stalwarts such as Plato, Epicurus, Thoreau, and so on. They go beyond just 'resisting the attention economy' to more general viewpoints on living life and spending time. These philosophical explorations justify the fact that 'Resisting the attention economy' is the subtitle and not the title of the book. There's some history, too, and thus making the book wide ranging in terms of the stations it visits (art, technology, philosophy, history).  Also, the subtitle is correctly titled 'Resisting' the attention economy and not 'Escaping', as I wrongly mentioned once to a colleague when mentioning the 'book I was reading currently' during a Coffee machine conversation. The book does expand on this theme, too. 

Overall, the book has thought provoking insights, and the percentage of the book I have 'highlighted' on my Kindle is probably the highest of all books I've read on the Kindle. I wish to keep coming back to the book over time, reading not just the highlighted parts but also exploring her references.  

Labels: Books

# posted by Ashwin Ravikumar @ 7:32 PM 0 Comments